Friday, November 16, 2018

Beyond Parochial Faith

Yesterday I sent my completed
manuscript, Beyond Parochial Faith: A Catholic Confesses to my
publishing company, Wipf and Stock. They publish mainly academic religious
works, but mine is a memoir.

I combine my personal story of growing up German Catholic in Stearns County
with my spiritual evolution. As a lifelong educator I aim to educate with this
book too. It exposes my deepest vulnerabilities to encourage readers as they
experience the pain of their own wounds.

I hope my story eases the spiritual work required of absolutely everyone—reflecting
on our lives, honoring our pain, and grappling with life's questions. I reveal
my secrets because seeing another's story somehow makes it easier to face one's
own.

Beyond Parochial Faith weaves together alcoholic husband and
mid-life meltdown, judgmental siblings and prudish aunts, the Goddess and the
historical Jesus, the Father/Son myth and Carl Jung, atheists and Benedictines.
I aim to inspire self-awareness, to open minds. to broaden horizons.

This book started four and a half years ago with a series of articles in Crossings,
the magazine published by the Stearns History Museum. My writers group
encouraged me to write more personal stories, which I did, but as I continued
writing, I fell back into my usual intellectual reflection.

The result is
this memoir that merges my life story with information challenging
the religion I learned in my youth. I had to unlearn a lot. Now you can unlearn
and learn with me.

Beyond Parochial Faith reemphasizes the message in my book published in 2007, God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky: Cherishing Christianity without Its Exclusive Claims. Its message is that Christianity mistakes its myth for history and its symbols for facts. With a few clicks on this site you can read excerpts from that book.

I neglected this blog while I was preparing it for publication. Now I plan to post here more often, probably some excerpts from Beyond Parochial Faith, which will come out in Spring 2019.

Welcome

Interested in religions and spirituality? You've come to the right place.

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This is a two-edged challenge. It invites believers to rethink their dogmas, and it challenges people without faith to rethink their certainty that everything religious is bunk.